2025 Symposium Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Steve Hampton

Stephen Carr Hampton (Cherokee Nation) is a birder and a writer, at the moment focusing on birds and climate change. He worked for the California Dept of Fish & Wildlife for 25 years, involved in oil spill damage assessments and seabird restoration. He was a member of the American Ornithological Society’s Ad Hoc Committee for English Bird Names, where he helped draft the recommendation to change all honorific names. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington. You can find his writings at stephen-carr-hampton.com, and at his two blogs: Memories of the People and The Cottonwood Post. 
 
We asked Steve to share why it’s important to him to be a part of the symposium:
Birds connect people to the land. They always have. In a world that is experiencing rapid climate change, I’m honored to meet the next generation who will teach us more about birds, and what birds can teach us. Thank you for your passion and dedication, for you will face unprecedented challenges in both conducting scientific research and in communicating what you learn. 
 

Student Keynote

Song Han Ngo​

Song Han became interested in birds at a very young age.  He is a youth board member at Eastside Audubon Society and a young birder at Birds Connect Seattle. Song Han values and enjoys taking part in citizen science, volunteering for local projects such as the Puget Sound Seabird Survey and the Seattle Bird Collision Monitoring Survey. At his high school, he started his own birdwatching club, where he wants to create a space where students can share their interests in birds and build a community.

Song Han also has a strong quantitative background and loves mathematics and computer science. One of his most memorable experiences was attending the Cornell Young Birders Event in Ithaca and learning about the intersection between ornithology and computer science through projects like Ebird, Merlin and Birdcast. Over the past couple of years, Song Han has worked to tie these two fields together, conducting research under the mentorship of Professor Douglas Robinson from Oregon State University to analyze different call types of Evening Grosbeaks using Machine learning techniques. He has also analyzed large scale migration data under Cornell researcher Andrew Farnsworth to determine trends between temperature and bird migration.

Student Keynote

Lara Tseng

Lara Tseng is 18 years old and in her senior year of college majoring in biology with a focus in ecology, evolution, and the environment through the Early Entrance Program at California State University, Los Angeles. She was awarded the Barry Goldwater Excellence in Education scholarship for her commitment to a research career in the natural sciences. Her current research investigates the impacts of extreme climatic fluctuations on the microstructural wear and pigmentation of yellow warbler tail feathers as a signal for survival and fitness. Lara has previously published peer-reviewed work on calcium consumption during the reproductive cycles of western bluebirds, and has written about geographic variation in dunlins and the obscure elgasi subspecies of the greater-white fronted goose for ABA’s Birding. 
She is active in various youth groups, including as a member of the student programs committee at Western Field Ornithologists and as an education intern for Sea & Sage and Pasadena Audubon Society chapters. One of Lara’s most memorable summers was spent working at the San Diego Natural History Museum as the birds and mammals apprentice, where she learned specimen preparation and collections maintenance in addition to participating in various field projects. She intends to pursue graduate studies in ornithology, with the hopes of a career in curatorship or collections management in the future. 

Christina Baal

Artist, Educator

Christina is an ardent birder, artist, and educator who loves combining these passions to get people excited about the natural world. Her dream in life is to meet and paint 10,000 different species of birds. Christina enjoys being involved in the birding community, and loves going to bird festivals to guide, teach art classes, and show her work. Her artwork has been featured at many events including “The Biggest Week in American Birding,” in Ohio, “Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival,” in Florida, and Cape May Audubon’s “World Series of Birding.” In 2022, her Burrowing Owls were featured as the American Birding Association’s 2022 “Bird of the Year.” Christina also loves teaching bird art classes and working as a bird guide, hoping to help other people fall in love with birds and art. She particularly loves working with young birders, and has been a camp instructor for the American Birding Association’s Camp Delaware Bay; she is also looking forward to being an instructor at Audubon’s Hog Island.
 
“When I graduated college, I had no money and no idea what I was going to do with my life- but I knew I wanted to meet birds, paint them, and convince other people to care about conservation and the natural world. Despite all odds, this has become what I do for a living. So many of the opportunities afforded to me despite an improbable dream and an unconventional career path happened because of incredible mentors and the kindness of the birding community. It means everything to me to be able to pay forward the kindness I have received and show young people that it is okay to go against the status quo, to dream big, and to work creatively and collaboratively to promote bird conservation no matter what your skill set and personal strengths.”

Erro Lehnert

Wildlife Biologist

Erro Lehnert is a wildlife biologist from Michigan. She especially loves birds, but her passion for all wildlife has taken her all over the world. Erro got her master’s degree in ornithology from the University of Central Oklahoma before she started with the California Condor Recovery Program in November of 2021. Erro has worked for various federal agencies as a biologist since 2009, and her travels have taken her to 13 states to work with birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles! But birds are her passion and working with Condors has been a dream job come true. Erro wants to protect the wild areas of the world and hopes that through research and science she can contribute to conservation practices for birds and all other wildlife. She hopes that by sharing enthusiasm for the natural world, those that she encounters will also find a love for nature and the world around them.

Jeff Nicholls

Lawyer, Indigenous Advocate

Jeff Nicholls is a member of the Raven Clan of the Tsimshian Nation. He completed his law degree at the University of Victoria, having previously graduated with a B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science and Indigenous Studies. Jeff is very passionate about asserting and supporting Indigenous legal orders, having worked with the Indigenous Law Research Unit to articulate Tsimshian law. For Jeff, Indigenous law is inextricably linked to the land and waters of his ancestral homeland. Developing a deep connection with his territory is a life-long pursuit. Jeff is an active volunteer. In addition to his work with RAVEN, Jeff is a staff lawyer with Ratcliffe, Vancouver. 

The Chilkat regalia in the photo above was woven by Tsamiianbaan – William White a master weaver from Lax Kw’alaams and depicts a Grizzly Bear, in particular, its ears.

 

Dennis Paulson

Zoologist

Dennis Paulson grew up in Miami, exposed to nature in all its glory while southern Florida was still largely unspoiled. He received his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Miami with a study of the dragonflies of southern Florida, and shortly thereafter he moved to Seattle, where he has lived ever since. He retired as the Director of the Slater Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound, where he also taught and mentored biology students. He enjoys his work so much that after 20 years of retirement, he continues to work there once a week. Dennis has taught classes at three universities and many adult-education venues. He has also led nature tours and traveled on his own to all continents, and he has studied dragonflies and birds worldwide and published over 100 scientific papers and a dozen books, mostly on his favorite animals. He is also an enthusiastic nature photographer, with photos published in magazines, books and interpretive displays.

Vesper Rothberg

Artist, Educator

Vesper Rothberg (they/them) is an artist and lifelong birder currently living in Bellingham, Washington on Lummi, Nooksack, and Coast Salish land. Vesper’s large-scale paintings of deceased birds encourage sensitivity and attentiveness to the natural world at a global turning point for conservation. They hold a BA and BFA in painting with a minor in biology from Western Washington University. Vesper is self-employed as a painter and tattoo artist at their studio where they feel grateful to make (mostly) bird tattoos on other birders for a living! Vesper was an Audubon Artist in Residence on Hog Island in Maine (2024), has shown their paintings in numerous museums and galleries, and has enjoyed building community through teaching bird drawing classes and guiding birding outings in their area. You can see their work at www.rachelrothberg.com.
 
“I want to bring people face-to-face with the interconnectivity of the world and provoke empathy for birds as individuals and support for conservation efforts. My work explores the tenacity, beauty, and vulnerability of birds at a critical point in their ecological history.”

Hannah Toutonghi

Data Scientist

Hannah is a field ornithologist from the greater Seattle area, who has focused her research efforts on Studying raptor migration and breeding birds in the boreal forest over the last several years. She has Previously worked at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory, the Natural Resources Research Institute, Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, and the Institute for Bird Populations. Hannah completed her master’s degree through the University of Minnesota Duluth, and now works as a data scientist at the Ocean Research College Academy in Everett, Washington. Throughout her field work experience and graduate school, she has realized how important it is to get students interested in the natural world. She is an avid birder and feels lucky to return to the Pacific Northwest to both enjoy and study the birds in this region.

Dr. Ursula Valdez

Tropical Ecologist & Conservationist

Dr. Valdez is a Peruvian-American Avian tropical ecologist and conservationist. She focuses on studies of birds of prey, bird community ecology and habitat use, and also works in bird research and conservation programs in Peru. She collaborates with other scientists and professionals and local communities of the Peruvian Amazon, in Madre de Dios, where she does research and trains students in field ecology and conservation programs. She is also a co-PI of the Peruvian Urban Birds Monitoring Project.  At UW Bothell, she teaches ecology, natural history and field ecology methods. She also offers opportunities for bird research to undergraduate students in restore lands and urban environments. Through her courses, and field study abroad to Peru, she offers opportunities to connect her students, both from the USA and Peru, with real-life cases and with a body of local and international researchers, conservation organizations and academic colleagues working on multiples disciplines.

Matthew Young

Conservation Ecologist, Author

Matthew Young is the Founder and Board President of the Finch Research Network. Matthew has also worked in the field of social work with special needs populations at the William George Agency for 12 years. Additionally, Matthew worked at the Cornell Lab across 15 years where he worked on Golden-winged Warblers, Voices of Hawaii’s Birds, Merlin Bird ID, and was Project Lead on Lab’s first Irruptive Finch Survey in 1999. Widely known as a preeminent authority on finches of North America, Matthew has written finch species accounts for breeding bird atlases, Birds of the World accounts, and published several papers on finches and the Red Crossbill vocal complex.